


The Lost

by idylilac



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, F/M, POV First Person, Prose Poem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 19:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14143371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idylilac/pseuds/idylilac
Summary: I was the dying art, personified.





	The Lost

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that I wrote in a fever in the middle of the night. It was as intense to write as I'm sure it will be to read. I took an artistic leap with this piece so I do hope you like it, I may expand on it once I find the time. But for now, here it is.

The tape weighed next to nothing in the palm of my hand. I handled it, turned it over and over in silence. It was really nothing but plastic and intricate mechanics, but everything encoded within it, I had perfect understanding. 

I understood the music, how it made me feel and how to share that feeling, sometimes almost too honestly. 

I also know how to write poetry. It was a dying art, I knew that much too, it was something that nobody took seriously anymore. But I didn't write it for nobody. I wrote it for myself, and for her, and she liked it. Even when she insisted that she loved it, time and time again. She liked it all the same. 

Tapes and poetry were the next best things I'd think intimate–that I could give, besides my heart, that I needed to stay intact. I told her that she wouldn't appreciate a dying flame, or something coated in tar. That's how I always envisioned the state of my heart to be. Though I didn't know why. 

All these things that childhood had given me were benign, and juvenile, I knew. Though, I had grown to hide behind those words and melodies, until I would become them. 

It first came in a static, dullness of tone, calling to me, in the back of my mind and in a dignified clarity within my dreams, as if I stared it boldly in the face. My attention seemed divided now, I'd never be fully present or completely absent. Everything wasn't absolute anymore. My thoughts, my dreams, my beliefs… It was all up in the air. Suspended by my doubt and my fear, of what I was now capable of. I never would want to know. Know the true extent of my will and power, but my curiosity only urged me to go further. 

But that wasn't the only thing that scared me. 

I scared me. To my very bone, throughout my entire skeletal structure caught me in a shiver, a shiver that would never still. 

That's when the poison first spread.

There was a whisper so soft and soothing, though the words spoken made little to no sense no matter the order I assembled them. So, I took them and made something else entirely, until I became them, and grew dependent on them until my words were never my own anymore. 

I came upon the water, over the garden wall. 

Where my brother and I first fell. 

Where I was still and calm.

Death had always been something of a faraway concept that play had introduced long ago, but it could never touch the invincibility of child-like wonder. 

But within the course of a few years, I had already lived an entire lifetime on the dual end of reality. 

Sometimes, in games like these, you get up two or three lives until you lose. I would be onto my third life now. 

But I had to ask,  
What if,  
You're losing  
And still breathing?

Then it was there again. 

A whisper like static in that dull hum that echoed in the back of my mind, the words that came through were lost in translation as they were being brought to the forefront of my thoughts. 

It came and went whenever it pleased, just to throw me off at the most inconvenient of times. 

In my dreams, it made perfect sense to me. Only for all reason to fall away once dawn broke. My attention was always divided now. 

I had one foot in reality and one in the void. 

Nothing seemed to be absolute anymore; my thoughts, my dreams, and my beliefs were all up in the air, suspended by doubt and desperation to feel gravity's pull. 

A whisper like static in the dull hum that echoed in the back of my mind, so soft and soothing, though the words never made sense no matter how I assembled them. It had a dignified tone, as if I were staring it boldly in the face.

It called to me, for me.

Only school seemed to make sense, math had solutions to every problem and so did science, but even that had numerous ways in which it could go… In an odd sort of way, it once brought me comfort to think that nothing was ever entirely set in stone.

Or at least, I thought, until I did finally make sense of it all.

I sat on the chair  
The one next to her bed  
I had fallen in and out of sleep,  
All much too bleak. 

The static and dull hum, were machines whirring and keeping her alive. I sat. Until I pulled out a tape and watched it as I turned it over and over again. It didn't mean anything, my tape, my poetry, my words didn't mean anything. Not even a spit of anything. I had no feeling. I was the dying art, personified. 

The whisper, so soft and soothing… it called to me, for me. To leave. But I couldn't move. I sat. As I watched as she laid so still. 

I shouldn't have taken her to the water… I shouldn't have told her that I dream of it almost every night. I didn't know what it all meant then, but I do now. 

I didn't know anything,  
Not a spit of anything. 

I couldn't live in tapes or words anymore. I lived with one foot cemented in reality and one in the void, the unknown. I didn't know what it meant. But I do now. 

She would come in and out… 

Out and over the garden wall,  
Struck by a truck,  
Coming around,  
And down the hill… 

No. 

It was a coma, caused by a truck striking her at just the right moment, and I understood it perfectly. 

But I couldn't move. 

I wouldn't move. 

Because I remember…

I was drowning, I was dying. With my brother, Gregory. But we came out of the thicket of trees, out of the woods, over the garden wall. We defeated the beast. 

The beast who haunts,  
Ever singing,  
His mournful melody  
In search of lost souls… 

\--/SUCH AS YOURSELVES!  
NO, NOT TO HELP YOU./ 

HE STALKS,  
LIKE THE NIGHT. 

HE SINGS THE FOUR WINDS,  
HE IS THE DEATH OF HOPE. 

He steals their children,  
And he'll…  
Ruin.

/AH, AHM, I-I'm sorry.  
Maybe I can… fix it?  
I… I can't  
fix it./

I remember. Sitting there on the edge of the water. Looking at her. As I tried to remember. Why I scared myself. Why I had that shiver in my bones, never to still. The water was much too still. 

I couldn't' remember, but now I do. That Halloween long ago. But I couldn't see. I wouldn't see anything but her smile. I couldn't take my eyes off her bright eyes, until they flickered out. 

A flame. To douse. To smother. 

I didn't see. The water so still. And dark. As if it were filled with tar. The unknown peeking through.

At me.

I heard a bell,  
As it called to me  
And that's all I could hear. 

It rings,  
And rings in my ears,  
So heavy,  
And mean; in endless ringing. 

The lost.  
I've never been so lost.  
I have lost everything. To--

The Unknown.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, if you don't completely hate me for leaving the ending and everything happening ambiguous and vague af. Let me know how you liked it, any critiques are welcome. I'm sorry for not posting in over a year, I was going through a rough patch but I'm semi-alright right now. Find me on tumblr: bitterbloom & twitter: bitterblooms, I would loooooove to hear from you! 
> 
> disclaimer: if you have read this before, it still came from /my/ rp account on twitter. (:


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